HELLO and welcome to your Yellowjackets 310 recap AKA the season finale recap! “Full Circle” was written by Ameni Rozsa and directed by Bart Nickerson. I can’t wait to chat with you in the comments about this episode and the season as a whole! If your comment contains spoilers, please frontload it with some non-spoiler text so the spoilers don’t show up in the recent comments box on the homepage. Please join me tonight for a virtual watch party of the finale!
As if things could get worse at Camp Yellowjackets, we suddenly find ourselves steeped in martial law, spearheaded by none other than teen despot Shauna Shipman. In the middle of the night, Nat is thrown from her shelter by masked guards for a “bed check,” overseen by number one in command Shauna, with a gun, and who is seemingly number two in command, Hannah with Kodi’s crossbow.
How did we get here?
Well, as a reminder, Hannah made the split decision to betray and kill Kodi last episode as an attempt to assimilate with the Yellowjackets and ensure her own survival. As a scientist who has studied a particular species’ intense approach to survival, she knows a thing or two about these animal choices.
Random “bed checks” implemented to stoke fear and encourage subservience are the natural progression for the society the Yellowjackets have been constructing all season. The second they put Ben on trial, they descended into a hellish reconfiguration of the outside world. Hannah, Edwin, and Kodi’s arrival almost amplified and accelerated this descent, some of the Yellowjackets (Shauna, Tai, Lottie) unable to reconcile what the group has done in the eyes of outsiders. They’ve doubled down on the rules they’ve created for themselves.
As Nat’s shelter is ransacked, she makes meaningful eye contact with Misty. We flash back to the aftermath of the moment from last week when Nat discovered Misty with the transponder from the plane. Nat is, naturally, furious. She screams, strikes Misty, sobs. Misty wants to know if she’s going to tell everyone. But Nat just wants to know how the transponder can get them home, as Misty had alluded to last episode. Misty explains the satellite phone and how Van has been trying to fix it.
Back at the bed raid, Misty asks Nat if she’s okay, but Nat doesn’t want to fucking talk to her. Misty makes meaningful eye contact with Van now. Clearly, these two are working on an escape plan together. Something tells me Nat could be in on it, too, and is both still mad at Misty but also performing a bit that the two are on the outs so as not to create suspicion. Does this mean Van also knows the truth about what Misty did?
We pan over to Kodi’s head, which has apparently been used for crossbow practice.
Lottie is dreaming. She’s dreaming of the Antler Queen, a more towering and theatrical version than we see in the pilot, with tree branches for fingers, enveloped in a fiery light deep in the caves. In the dream, Lottie screams.
Then her teen self, wearing the outfit from the bonfire in the pilot, finds herself in the morgue, confronted by her future dead self. Simone Kessel’s Lottie bolts upright, gasping for breath. “Did I miss it?” she asks. “We didn’t miss anything,” her younger self says. “Remember what we promised?” Adult Lottie nods, and Teen Lottie says “it’s time to meet her.”
Photo Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Lottie walks through water in what looks like the scene of her death. She’s surrounded by candles and wearing a long white gown. We hear a baby crying. But then Adult Lottie snaps out of this vision and finds herself simply in her regular pajamas standing in her building’s basement. There are no candles. There are no sounds.
“Are you there?” she asks. We cut to the main title sequence, which for some reason gave me a jumpscare!!!!
Okay, before we move on, I want to talk about this Lottie sequence! I was hoping we’d get some sort of scene between the two Lotties, because all the other dead Yellowjackets (Nat, Van) got to have those doubling moments. (Fun fact: Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose pitched the joint hospital scene to the writers. Read about that and more in my interview with Liv!) This Lottie v. Lottie sequence though is a definite departure from the others. Unlike Nat and Van, the younger self doesn’t visit the older self on the plane. Instead of the past visiting the present as it did for the others, it feels more like Lottie’s two timelines are bleeding into each other. Is she, as her younger self, dreaming of her future self and her death? Is her adult self being visited by her past in her final moments? I think both are happening! The entire sequence reminds me a lot of how death, grief, and a fracturing of the self function in The Haunting of Hill House, particularly in Nell’s storyline. Lottie’s envisioned Antler Queen is giving Bent-Neck Lady.
Post-title sequence, we drop right into a very haunting moment. Shauna and Tai are in Shauna’s van. Shauna offers she knew Melissa was a threat, but—
Tai cuts her off. She doesn’t want any words of condolences or excuses or reasoning right now. She looks wounded, but she also looks distant, like she almost can’t quite believe this has happened, is happening. She tells Shauna to pull off to a random stretch of woods alongside the road.
She doesn’t want Shauna’s help; she has to do this alone. She pulls Van’s body, rolled up in a carpet, out from the van and painstakingly rolls it toward the grave she has dug. We flash back to moments between both characters from the past two seasons — tender, lovely moments, none of the trauma and hurt that ultimately has led them here.
But despite this selective presentation of memories, Tai says something surprising: “I’m done forgetting, Van, starting now, I’m gonna remember all of it. All of you. And all of me.”
Here’s how I choose to interpret her words: Other Tai has always been Tai’s way of forgetting, of suppressing her worst memories but also her worst urges and tendencies. Other Tai has not been an Other Entity so much as another part of Tai. Choosing to remember all of herself means remembering this. And maybe giving in to the idea that she contains these parts of herself will ironically give her control over herself again.
Tai stabs Van’s body and extracts her heart, which she eats. I’ve been saying since the beginning of the series that cannibalism functions as a form of erotic — and usually specifically sapphic — intimacy on this show, and it doesn’t get more on-the-nose about it than this! Eating your lover’s heart? That’s lesbian third base, baby.
Also, I called for an awards campaign for Lauren Ambrose last week, and now I’m calling for one for Tawny Cypress, too!
Callie is vaping under the bleachers at school when Misty sneaks up on her to make some accusations: first, that Callie slipped something in her drink, which Callie immediately cops to.
Then Misty accuses her of killing Lottie. Callie laughs. But then Misty shows Callie a photo of her on Lottie’s phone, and her face shifts. Misty also reveals the DNA found at the crime scene matched Shauna’s DNA — which means it’s also a match for Callie.
Callie cracks pretty quickly now, but she says it was an accident and she didn’t mean to kill her. She says it started with the tape. She knew her mom was hiding things, especially after the night with Natalie in the woods.
Photo Credit: Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
We watch the recent past play out: Callie wanted to listen to the tape but didn’t know how. And then the night Shauna kicked Lottie out of the house, the tape, apparently, went missing. Callie thought Lottie must have taken it, so she went to find her in the city. She sees Lottie come out of the building basement. “It’s you,” Lottie says.
She leads Callie into the basement, where lit candles light the steps like in the beginning of the episode. “Oh, what the fuck?” Callie says, injecting some humor into an otherwise eerie moment but also just reiterating that Lottie is untethered from reality at the moment.
Callie only came for the tape, which Lottie holds out before tucking back under her arm. Lottie tells Callie she isn’t here because of the tape but because she wants to understand her mother. Lottie restarts their truth or dare game from before, says truth, she’ll answer anything Callie wants.
“Does she just not love me?” Callie asks about Shauna. Talk about a knife to the heart…
Lottie isn’t equipped to answer this one. I’m sure she was more so hoping Callie would ask something about screaming trees and Antler Queens. Callie continues down her depressing line of questioning, saying Jeff has told her Shauna has PTSD. She wants so desperately to understand and to empathize, but when she looks into her mother’s eyes, “they’re so cold, it’s like…”
“It’s like looking straight into the earth,” Lottie finishes for her.
Callie wants to know what that is, and Lottie tells her it’s It. Lottie acts as if Callie obviously feels this and knows this, that there’s an It inside her mother and It is inside her, too. I am desperate for Callie to find an adult who can, you know, actually take care of her instead of making her life and mommy issues infinitely worse! For Callie, it isn’t about unspooling some sort of conspiracy or paranormal mystery. For her, it’s just about facing the very real mystery of why her mother doesn’t or cannot love her.
Lottie continues to ramble about It, about how It is what caused Callie to drug Misty, how Shauna saw It more than the rest. “So, like, adrenaline?” Callie asks, but no, Lottie insists It is more than that. “It undergirds everything. It is the pulse of life. It’s why we did what we did out there. It’s why we couldn’t stop,” she says.
“Like eating each other?” Callie asks.
“And hunting each other,” Lottie responds chillingly. “And all those thrilling, terrible things.”
Photo Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Callie referring to the “It” Lottie describes as “adrenaline” is, I think, not far from the truth of things. Like Tai talking about wanting to remember everything and thereby perhaps vanquishing Other Tai, Lottie is using this concept of “It” to obscure reality. “It” refers to the Yellowjackets worst impulses, to the “thrilling, terrible” things they had to do to survive but then kept doing. They can’t escape It, because they can’t escape their trauma nor the choices they made. By telling Callie she has It in her, she’s really saying she has inherited trauma. She has harmful urges — like dumping animal guts on mean girls and drugging Misty — forged by her mother’s neglect and secrecy. “It” lives within the Yellowjackets. Lottie just turned it into an external force that others then clung to because it was easier to accept a supernatural reasoning for why they did some of the worst things they did than it was to accept they made those choices on their own.
Lottie says It brought her here. She calls Callie “our child.” Callie is rightfully disturbed and ascends the stairs, but Lottie follows and doubles down: “You are the child of that place.”
“It took our baby, and it gave us you,” she adds.
Lottie’s entire belief system constructed in the wilderness relies on this concept of sacrifice and reward, of even trades. Lottie has been transfixed by the presence of Callie ever since she first laid eyes on her at the end of last season. It’s like it transported her back to the wilderness, this corporeal reminder of the loss of the baby, something Lottie took particularly hard, especially since she decided early on that Shauna’s wilderness baby would belong to all of them, unite them in purpose. That plan backfired in many ways, including Shauna nearly killing Lottie in a fit rage after losing her baby. In Callie, it’s almost like Lottie sees the possibility of a parallel universe, one where Shauna’s baby survives and belongs to them all as a symbol of hope.
Callie is understandably very freaked out. Lottie says she has been waiting for her for 25 years. “She can’t love you, because she’s jealous,” she adds. “You’re just like her, only more.”
If Callie is just like Shauna but more, I’m very afraid of what Callie might be capable of. But I also think Lottie is projecting a lot onto Callie that isn’t actually there. Unfortunately, that might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy based on what happens next. Callie’s reaction to Lottie’s words? She pushes her down the stairs. It’s clear she didn’t mean to kill her, but then again, impulsive violent outbursts do make it seem like the cannibalistic apple doesn’t fall far from the screaming tree.
Heeding Misty’s advice to confess to someone, Callie tells Jeff she killed Lottie. Her main concern though? That he thinks she might be just as fucked up as Shauna. He denies it, but she becomes overwhelmed at the possibility. “I’ve known you your whole life, Cals. I promise you you’re not just like your mother,” Jeff assures her. It was an accident; she was scared. Jeff does have a pretty high capacity for forgiveness and excuses when it comes to one of the women in his life doing murder and other various crimes.
Photo Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Something has shifted in his loyalties though. As we’ve been seeing in the past couple episodes, he is no longer a ride or die wife guy. He apologizes to Callie for not protecting her from Shauna. Jeff has clearly never fully understood what Shauna is capable of — otherwise, he never would have tried to blackmail her teammates. But whereas he would have done anything to protect Shauna before, he now seems willing to do anything to protect Callie — which might require turning on Shauna.
In the wilderness, Misty and Van have a whispered conference. They are indeed trying to fix the phone, which is turning on, but the line sounds dead.
They’re interrupted by cries from Akilah, whose animals have all died. This time, it isn’t a hallucination; they really are dead, the others gathering to witness. She tells them it was just like in her vision, and this obviously carries weight in this group. Akilah asks Lottie how It could have let this happen, and Nat gently suggests maybe It wants them to leave. Nice try, Nat!
Lottie thinks they have to prove their faithfulness because they’ve become arrogant. Ladies, why are we still listening to Lottie!!! They’ve been providing sacrifices to the wilderness: coach, Kodi, Edwin. But, Mari decides to chime in, they were all their enemies. “We haven’t offered It ourselves,” Lottie says. She proposes another hunt. Shauna, looking very Katniss-core these days, looks confused but then hardens and agrees. Perhaps she sees this as a way of preserving her power, continuing the belief system that keeps many of the Yellowjackets in line.
Nat is out. She knows how the hunt went last time. She may have lived, but survival came at a cost. Shauna doesn’t allow her to opt out though, and Nat knows Shauna holds the power — quite literally with the gun strapped to her shoulder. It’s decided: They’ll draw in the morning.
Van holds a deck of cards in her shelter with Tai, who insists they can’t leave it to change. Van thought that was the point though, to let the wilderness decide. Tai doesn’t accept that though. She wants to ensure they both survive, and she points out Van rigged the draw for Crystal. But that was for shit bucket duty, not for choosing who is going to be group-hunted. (Side note: Wasn’t Kristen/Crystal on shit bucket duty when Misty killed her? Did Van sort of accidentally trigger her death?)
“These are our friends, out teammates,” Van says. Where was her conscience when they were sentencing Coach to death?! But not all of them are, Tai reasons. She wants Van to make sure Hannah draws the Queen. She’s still an outsider after all, no matter her attempts to assimilate with the Yellowjackets. It’s a good reminder for the real world: Assimilation won’t save us.
I did wonder last recap if Hannah could be Pit Girl. The casting seems to want us to wonder that! She’s small enough to pass as a teen.
Shauna, blood finally cleaned from her face, returns home to an empty house with empty closets. Jeff and Callie’s things are gone, and their phones are disconnected. She’s lost another hive.
Teen Shauna is awoken by what I thought was the voice of Jackie, but the captions claim it’s Lottie. She emerges from her shelter to a snow-covered camp. Winter is here, and it’s time for the draw.
Everyone circles up, and Van shuffles, working some of her sleight of hand magic. They begin, but after the first few pulls, Shauna senses something’s up. Van and Tai look too calm. Shauna changes her place in the circle, which means that the card intended for Hannah will go to her long-time nemesis Mari. Tai tells her not to take any extra risks, and Shauna fires back: “How’d you get into AP stats? It doesn’t change the odds.” GOTCHYA THERE, TAI.
Sure enough, Mari draws the Queen. All of you who have been theorizing Mari is Pit Girl since season one are correct. And now, we’ll see the lead-up to her fate.
Photo Credit: Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
The tension and suspense in this finale is so impressive. Even as we know what’s coming, it’s a nail-biter. We know the draw will result in Pit Girl, and then once Mari draws the card, we know she will be hunted, lethally trapped, and devoured. And yet every second leading up to it is a thrill, humming with uncertainty. From Tai and Van targeting to Hannah to Shauna disrupting the already rigged draw in order to kill off her enemy, every single maneuver is backed by interesting motives and little twists.
The very beginning of this season tells us everything we need to know about where the Yellowjackets are now. They’re playing a game. They aren’t just surviving in the wilderness; they’re making a game of it — a game in which there are winners, losers, upsets, triumphs, battles. From that season three premiere of them playing a made-up “capture the bone” game to this hunt, there’s a clear throughline. The longer they are away from the outside world, the more they’re becoming lost in this world they’ve built for themselves, in these games they play. This also seeps into the present-day timeline. What were Tai and Van doing after the supposed sacrifice of the waiter if not playing a game to ensure Van’s life? Shauna, Walter, and Misty all made a game of solving Lottie’s murder. Shauna making Melissa eat her own arm? That’s just a game to her. Before the Yellowjackets crashed, they were athletes. It’s like the crash crystalized those instincts and behaviors within them. So many of them view life as a series of challenges to be won.
Shauna tells Mari to take off her cape. She clasps the heart necklace to her and starts counting. “You deserve everything that’s coming to you,” Mari shouts at Shauna before running away. In the present day, Shauna’s family has left her, soooo Mari might be foreshadowing that!
Travis tries to stop Shauna, and she tells him to get out her way if he isn’t going to hunt. She threatens to kill him like his brother. But Travis rambles about how none of this is real, how he isn’t sure which of his thoughts are his own, which are Javi’s. “My favorite thoughts are Jackies,” he says. “The slumber party makeouts, the jealousy, the betrayal.” Well, I’m taking that as canonical evidence Shauna and Jackie made out in the past.
The girls run through the wilderness making animal sounds. Folks, we have ourselves a hunt.
Photo Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Misty is cleaning out Caligula’s cage when Shauna barges in to accuse her of doing something to her family. Misty reveals to her that her daughter killed Lottie. Shauna wishes Misty hadn’t involved herself. “She was desperate for someone to talk to,” Misty says. “And you were busy eating your ex-girlfriend’s arm, so.”
“You are just as fucked up as I am,” Shauna throws at Misty, but Misty is pretty unfazed by Shauna these days.
We move back to the past again, the. Yellowjackets pursuing Mari with weapons. Shauna and Tai have teamed up for the hunt, and Tai wants to split up, but Shauna tells her to stay close because “something’s weird.” Mari strips off her layers to try to throw the pack off. In just her nightgown, she becomes full Pit Girl.
Photo Credit: Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Shauna accuses Tai of trying to let Mari get away and asks who the card was meant for, revealing she knows they fucked with the draw. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll back up,” Tai threatens.
Van uses the cover of the hunt to visit the satellite phone, and Hannah witnesses her retrieving it. Gen finds Tai and Shauna and says Van hurt herself and needs help. Shauna thinks it’s a lie and a trap, and Tai accuses her of being paranoid. Shauna relents and lets Tai go. She howls and pulls her cap over her face. It’s quite the disturbing image.
Nat corners Hannah, who insists she’s on Nat’s side. But Nat points out she’s on everyone’s side. Hannah reiterates that she had to kill Kodi otherwise Shauna would have killed them both. “I am just trying to survive, the same as you,” Hannah says. She wants to get out of the wilderness, just like Nat.
Akilah chooses this moment to go into the caves, and Lottie is already in there talking to rocks. “I know it must hurt to do what you did,” Lottie says to Akilah. In flashback, we see Akilah telling Gen, Mari, and Melissa that if they want a hunt, she has an idea. She poisoned her own animals, which did indeed trigger the need for a hunt. It seems like maybe the group through that doing a hunt would remind them they shouldn’t be out here, doing these horrible things. I think they thought a hunt would lead to home. Seeing that Mari was part of this group Akilah talked to is devastating, given where it all ends for her.
Gen leads Tai in circles, and when Van emerges, Tai realizes Gen has indeed been lying to her. But it isn’t for nefarious reasons. Mari is Gen’s friend, and she’s just trying to give her a fighting chance.
Lottie finds Mari, who tells her to fuck off and then runs away…and into the pit. It’s oddly anticlimactic to watch her fall into the snow-covered earth, but that almost makes it even more brutal, the inevitability of it all.
Shauna, meanwhile, is being choked out by Melissa, who wants her revenge but then falls short of seeing it through completely. “I knew you’d turn out to be boring,” Shauna says. Is there ANYTHING Shauna doesn’t have an absolutely evil comeback for these days? Melissa just almost tried to KILL HER, and she’s still throwing mean teen insults at her.
In the present, Tai meets at the same diner she meets Shauna at in the pilot. Only, it’s very clear she isn’t meeting with Shauna again, because the topic of conversation is how fucked up Shauna is. “It’s Shauna’s fault that Van is dead,” Tai says, which I’m guessing is setting up Tai and Shauna’s arc for next season. Tai wants revenge. Tai says Shauna fueled the worst of what they went through in the wilderness, thrived on it. This was one of her repressed memories of the past, just how bad Shauna was. It makes sense, especially in the context of the surviving Yellowjackets banding together to protect each other. Tai chose that protection over the truth, and it made her forget just how bad Shauna was and is capable of being.
She’s talking, of course, to Misty. Neither of them want Shauna to be the last one standing. Season four is going to be the Yellowjackets v. Shauna it seems, and I cannot wait. No literally, I cannot wait!!!! I don’t want this season to be over!!! Are you coming to the season finale watch party I’m hosting tonight?!
Van cries in Tai’s arms. “It’s Mari,” she says, her voice breaking. Shauna, though, shows no remorse or grief. She killed that part of herself a long time ago. Mari’s body is dragged through the snow, and this time we see her face before panning up to the shot of her bloodied hair dragging behind her from the pilot. Again, the fact that we knew this was coming makes it almost that much harder to watch. Shauna tells Nat to slit Mari’s throat. She really is thriving on this, just like Tai says in the present.
Shauna says something absolutely harrowing to the others: “Prepare her for tonight, and when it’s done, bring me her hair.”
In the present, Shauna’s heating up a hot pocket. She spots something under the refrigerator. It’s the letter Melissa included in the envelope with the tape. If you pause it at timestamp 52:27, you can read most of it (screencapping still isn’t working for me for some reason), but essentially it just amounts to a nice letter from Melissa apologizing for faking her own death and noting that she has a happy family and that the tape has gotten in the way of her ability to let go entirely. She sent it to them not as a threat but as a sense of closure.
Shauna rips up the letter and shoves it in the garbage disposal while flashing back to some of her worst present timeline moments through the seasons — killing the rabbit, killing Adam, biting Melissa’s arm. She breaks down crying.
Shauna then sits down to write a letter herself:
“I’ve tried for years to remember what happened out there, to understand why it seemed like I couldn’t remember so much of it, why none of us could. I’m finally starting to realize we can’t remember it because at some point we became so alive in that place that we lost our capacity for self-reflection. The trauma people say survivors forget things to protect themselves because they were so horrible, but I think we can’t or won’t remember it clearly because we recognize deep down that we were having so much fun. That’s the terrible truth we left out there buried. Along with the people we called our friends. Except it’s all coming back to me now. The danger. The thrill. The person I was back then. Not a wife or a mother, I was a warrior. I was a fucking queen. I let all of it slip away from me. It’s time to start taking it back.”
This monologue plays over the past, over the feast of Mari. Shauna is indeed a fucking queen in the past, the Antler Queen herself, instructing the others to “eat and never forget this.” Mari’s hair that she ordered the others to bring her is woven into Shauna’s cape.
Photo Credit: Darko Sikman/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
Shauna corners Nat to ask if she had something to do with what happened out there, but it isn’t Nat. It’s Hannah. Shauna realizes she has been tricked, shouts Natalie’s name into the wilderness. But Nat is already very far away with the satellite phone, trying to get a signal. She sends out a distress call over the line. At last, someone responds. “I can hear you,” a man’s voice says.
Oh, we’re getting rescued, baby!!!!
I love this Shauna voiceover at the end of the episode — another perfect bookend with the season premiere, which also includes a disturbing Shauna voiceover in the teen timeline — because it casts the time in the wilderness in an even scarier light than ever before. I don’t think her words are universally true for all of the characters; in fact, they might only really be true for her. But regardless, the thought that anyone could have been having fun out there is a deeply disturbing mindfuck. It goes against everything expected. Yes, Shauna experienced immense trauma in the wilderness, but she also experienced immense power, and nothing about her life in the regular world compares. In her mind, she reached her full potential out there, in the wilderness. Before the wilderness, she lived in Jackie’s shadow, did what Jackie told her to do. She didn’t know how to define herself outside of that. Jackie’s death both broke her and freed her.
Season three has done such a great job of complicating the idea of heroes and villains, of survivors and oppressors. The arc in the wilderness has exposed the Yellowjackets as perpetuators of harm. They’re expert saboteurs at this point, literally killing their first real shot at rescue. We watch in this finale as they string up, slice, and eat Mari. All season has been building to this point of, as the theme song echoes, no return. There’s no real coming back from this. The adult Yellowjackets have all suppressed their memories in their own ways, but the mask is off now. Heading into season four (which hasn’t been officially announced yet?!), they’re vowing to remember all of it.
Should we feel for the Yellowjackets or fear them? This season has muddled the answer to that question, because it’s pretty much both. They are survivors. They’re also hunters. The lines between predator and prey have disappeared as if buried beneath a blizzard.
Ambivalence has always been a core part of this series. There’s always the question of what is really happening? Are there paranormal presences or are there just parts of life — especially lives interrupted and distorted by unfathomable trauma — that seem paranormal or inexplicable? This season, we also get ambivalence in the form of character motive and whether certain characters are “good” or not. They’re all wrestling with “thrilling, terrible” urges and instincts. They carry the It of the wilderness inside them. In the case of Callie’s arc, the season seems to be asking whether that It can be inherited.
The finale provides answers as to who Pit Girl is, who the Antler Queen is, and who killed Lottie. None of these reveals are all that surprising, but they manage to leave an impact more meaningful and lasting than shock value. Even when you can see these reveals coming, that doesn’t lessen their impact. It’s gut-wrenching to watch Mari become Pit Girl, to watch Shauna so seamlessly slip into her Antler Queen regalia and status, to grapple with the fact of Callie killing Lottie. I’ve never been a particularly answers-obsessed fan of this show; I prefer the questions and the uncertainty. And the finale strikes a balance between giving some answers and still leaving a lot to speculation.
Nat’s call to the outside world signals impending rescue but also an even deeper fracturing of the group and the Yellowjackets’ senses of who they are. The frog scientists’ arrival shattered the new realities they’d built from themselves by bringing them face to face with their previous realities. Whatever is to come for the Yellowjackets — in both timelines — I don’t think it’s going to look like rescue so much as a reckoning.
Last Buzz:
- I understand why this season might be divisive, but I loved it and especially liked it more than the second season. I loved individual episodes in season two but didn’t feel like the whole season perfectly clicked together. But this season, I feel like the episodes and the season as a whole work very, very well. There are some big swings in here! This season matches the energy of the series’ pilot!!!
- Since this episode does close the loop of the very first scenes of the series by giving us Mari as Pit Girl, I do kind of wish it was directed by Karyn Kusama. Which is not a knock on Bart who I think does a very strong job directing this episode!
- “Mothers and daughters share mitochondrial DNA and, apparently, homicidal tendencies.”
- Here’s my last reminder of the virtual watch party for the finale, happening tonight at 6pm pacific/9pm eastern! I’ll be there! Let’s scream together! RSVP required!!!
- If you have enjoyed these recaps all season and you have the means, then I strongly encourage you to sign up for an AF Media membership for just $4 a month. These recaps are a labor of love, and your memberships help support editorial so much!
- Thank you to all of you for making these recaps such a joy to write and for showing up in the comments every week. It has been so fun, and I’ve loved seeing your theories, jokes, questions, etc! Until next time!
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When you wrote about Lottie’s sequence in the beginning where she’s walking through the watery candle-lit corridor, I wasn’t clear if you knew that this is the same sequence as in S1, only with Adult Lottie instead of Teen Lottie (who had a vision about it).
You mentioned Shauna pausing and looking a bit confused before agreeing to a hunt. One key thing is that before she agrees, she turns and looks at Mari. Shauna kinda had it in her mind all along that this would be an opportunity to finally kill Mari. “I can’t believe we didn’t eat that bitch first.”
You also mentioned Lottie bumping into Mari during the hunt and Mari running away from her, but didn’t get into what Lottie said to Mari. She said something about Mari being in the same place but that things could turn out differently. Lottie was right – they were actually in the area of the pit, which Mari had fallen into once already. But Mari didn’t recognize where she was, and so fell in again, this time fatally.
I’ve been reading speculation that – aside from Lottie – the hunt was basically orchestrated in order to give Natalie a chance to get away with the phone to call for help. We do see from Travis’s smirk at the end that he was in on it along with Van and Misty. And Mari was part of the group that wanted to leave; she’s the one who brought Hannah to Natalie before to work out an escape plan (the one Shauna blew up). So this was all actually quite noble on Mari’s part! It also makes sense of her final words to Shauna that she deserves everything that’s coming to her, because Mari knew there was this rebellion in the works.
Tai was one of the people who wanted to stay and so clearly was not in on all the scheming re: the phone. It will be interesting to see if Van leaving her out of the loop is addressed next season.
Oh! That’s a great theory about why the whole thing happened. If that’s the case I love that Travis’ part was “dude just act like you’re on shrooms again”
I looooooooooved this episode and this season.
All I’m really left with is – I wonder if we will come back to Cabin Daddy and the symbol next season?
Thanks for these recaps. What a blast.
wait i’m back to say (SPOILERS INCOMING)…..
everyone had a role in MAKING shauna who she was. she did the ugly work. she butchered javi. she rationed their meat when they were starving.
and now she’s a scapegoat. “all the worst things we went through out there were because of her.” she’s still taking on the dirtiest, ugliest, most violent parts of all of them. and they want to kill her for it.
i don’t think tai really *can* remember until she accepts and integrates that.
This comment totally unlocked something for me so huge thanks.
Remembering the ways that Shauna was tasked with the darkest tasks and how the entire team focused on her ultimately doomed pregnancy, I think I can better wrap at a “why” for why the other Yellow jackets followed her. I was missing the piece that explained how they all so quickly fell in line to her worst impulses this season. But maybe there was this deep sense of guilt for all they had asked her to do leading up to this.
Holding space for the finale of our favorite shooooow
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Okay here we go
“the cannibalistic apple doesn’t fall far from the screaming tree” is a perfect summation. My viewing friends said Callie pushing Lottie felt wildly out of character but I thought it mirrored Shauna’s first kill: an accident born of anger. Jackie and Lottie were both accidents and I am wondering where this will send Callie.
Also wondering if the last two seasons (it’s a 5 season plan, right?) will show the teens reintegrating into society. If rescue isn’t the end of their story. I do want to see how Shauna settles down into becoming a house wife and how fast everyone starts forgetting details.
I have been tapping my foot and checking my watch waiting — and WAITNG — for the post-rescue reintegration stories! To me, that’s the most interesting part psychologically. We’ve seen how they got from soccer team to wilderness tribe, and we’ve seen present day. How did they get from THERE to HERE?? Waiting waiting . . .
I don’t think I have GASPED this many times watching Yellowjackets in a minute!!!
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It’s interesting how as I’ve been perusing the various online spaces chatting about the finale, I see SO many comments to the effect of “if [fill in the blank character] wouldn’t have done [fill in the blank action] then none of this would’ve happened.” I understand the instinct but 1) that’s how a plot works, and most importantly 2) this show has always been about the deeper, more human consequences. How the Yellowjackets respond to various events over the course of the series only seems to be more and more rooted in fear and trauma and power.
I appreciate so much in your recaps, Kayla, that you point out the blurry lines between what is done out of survival and what pushes far beyond that.
I’m so excited for season 4. Very curious (if indeed the plan is still 5 seasons) where the show will go beyond the wilderness post-rescue.
“Eating your lover’s heart? That’s lesbian third base, baby.”
IM GONNA QUOTE U ON TGAT
Seriously! When I’ve forgotten all the details of this series, I’m still gonna remember that!!
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again……from the hit broadway musical Cats, and basically Shauna’s letter to herself.
They can never make me hate you Shauna, real talk though, why don’t you think they didn’t just all team up against her? It seemed like she had Tai and Lottie, but everyone else seemed like they were tired of her reign. For as paranoid as she was nothing really happened except when she got hit in the face with a stick by her ex-lover.
Natalie on the mountaintop was a perfect cut scene. She is going to get them out of there!
Also, I am rewatching season 1 and trying to follow along with hints that the YJs are repressing all of these memories. I mean, I can’t remember lots of things from high school, but I wonder what core things they aren’t remembering that we see from the kid timeline every week.
Kayla, you crush it with these reviews and it’s always my first place I go after an episode. Can’t wait til next season!
I have so many feelings and thoughts that I can’t even begin to distill at the moment so I’m just going to share my absolute crackpot theory for next season
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Season 4 opens with Shauna on a book tour as a best selling author of either her “tell all” or some fiction book about “what might have happened” out there. I don’t really think this will actually happen but given the motif of her writing, I couldn’t push the thought away.
Antler Queen on a book tour, how diabolical.
Antler Queen would be a great book title!
I was thinking back to season 1 and the scene where they carve up Adam’s body. Shauna and Nat are the ones who do are there, but Shauna wields the electric knife after Misty says she is the one with the most practice. However, after this season, it seems like it really should have been Nat doing it because Shauna only ever butchered Javi and made Nat do both Ben and Mari (although, I guess we know now that it was really Hannah doing Mari), and potentially whoever is left.
I know the theory has always been there were 8 survivors because of the feast in the pilot where we see 8 people. But, now we know that Nat wasn’t there for it, Akilah disappeared after her confrontation in the cave with Lottie where she was wielding a rock, and Travis seems to have been passed out on mushrooms again. Speaking of Travis, why is it that Nat wasn’t allowed to opt out of the hunt, but Travis was? Gender bias? Or out of respect for the fact the last hunt ended in his brother’s death?
I’ve been pondering how much of what we are seeing in the past is real or their fractured memories. Of the rescued Yellowjackets, the only one who was a reliable narrator of what happened was Nat. It’s part of why she was the one who was most fucked up. She is the only one who didn’t lose her humanity and her mind out in the wilderness and the only one who couldn’t repress the reality without the help of substances. Tai is split in 2, Misty refers to their time out there as one long sleepover, Shauna herself says she can’t remember whole chunks of time and chalks it up to it being “fun” and Lottie is clearly still mentally ill. Van, as the storyteller, reframed their time as a fun bedtime story and was ready to hunt Shauna in the woods as an adult. So, at this point, everyone is an unreliable narrator.
I’m glad we got more context for that smirk of Misty’s after the feast. What we all saw as linear in the pilot was actually spread out over the course of a day and the smirk is the knowledge that Nat made it out and will get them rescued!
As time goes on, I get more skeptical that the writers really had this 5 season Bible they claim. It’s starting to feel more like Alias, where JJ Abrams was like “I have a plan, trust the process.” And then went off to make Star Trek and the show became totally nonsensical. I hope they are able to prove me wrong and they get all 5 seasons that were planned. This episode with all its answers feels like they wrapped things up in case they don’t get another season pickup. There are a lot of questions, but we know the answers to the original mystery and we know who got them rescued now, so seasons 4 and 5 will be filling in blanks post-rescue and seeing who has a final faceoff with Shauna.
I think cuz the hunt is about power control and the group hierarchy. Travis has no role in the hierarchy. Whether he hunts or not has no affect on Shanas power.
Keeping in the system of sacrifices and rewards they set up it lowkey feels like season 3 is the reward for sticking it out through season 2. Thank you for your recaps all season and being my fave place to chat on the internet.
Anyway…idk if I missed something but if it was just a nice letter and she was telling the truth about her motives for sending the tape… why did Hillary Swank kill Van??
Also do we agree that Misty probably remembers everything from out there?
Why DID Melissa murder Van?? To me, it was so incongruous with everything else that it felt totally gratuitous. Why, Hilary, WHY???
I have two possible readings on why Hilary Swank killed Van:
1. either because Shauna had reawakened her love of the game by attacking/biting her—i.e. basically, her plan in sending Shauna the tape backfired, and instead of giving her closure, it reopened the wound, WIDE. Or,
2. The plan was always to lure Shauna and the other Yellowjackets back in so she could be part of things, and also prove (to herself? to Shauna?) that she was definitively Not Boring.
(Or of course, it could be a psychological-repressions-fueled mishmash of the two…)
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I plan on doing a season 3 re-watch soon, but my impression coming out of the finale is that the season was pretty great overall. I was especially impressed with the improvement made to the adult storyline. By the end of episode 8, with Shauna taking a bite out of Hillary Swank’s arm, I could totally buy that this character had ruled that camp 25 years ago with an iron fist.
The consensus on reddit is that the season picked up after episode 5. However, my personal favorite was the third. I love it when a show hits you unexpectedly with an unsettling, horror-tinged episode. (My personal Mad Men fave is season 5’s Mystery Date for this very reason.) And I know it shouldn’t have been unexpected, considering this is a show about cannibals. But what can I say, the idyllic tone of the wilderness scenes in episodes 1 and 2 (Cat Stevens needle drop!) made me lower my guard.
In terms of the finale, the entire hunt sequence had me with a pit in my stomach, it was so tense. Probably because I’ve always had a soft spot for Mari. Also, Sophie Nelisse was on fire during the card drawing scene.
Well, anyway, I’m hoping they get two more seasons, but if they can’t, at least one more? I wanna see how the adult Tai-Misty team-up plays out! You know that, at some point, Shauna is going to throw in Misty’s face that she was never actually part of the team! It seems like Misty forgets sometimes, but the other adults treat her accordingly.
Thank you, Kayla, for your wonderful recaps! Right after each YJ season, I play around with the idea of taking an English lit course at a community college, and it’s because of the prior weeks spent reading your thoughtful analyses.
Ok I’ve come back around to this season, this episode has retroactively made me like the previous few more, though I suspect I’m gonna be doing a rewatch shortly.
I find it interesting that Mari basically orchestrated her own death, she conspired to create the need for the hunt and she was the one to suggest that they need to hunt one of their own in order to appease it! Mari you will be missed, I hope you get a big slurpee on the other side.
Speaking of It I think the show has all but confirmed that there’s nothing supernatural going on, what do you all think?
Shauna it was a piece of paper you could’ve burned it, the garbage disposal is a wild choice.
I wonder if we’re ever going to find out who the shadowy figure in Jackie’s death hallucination was? Since it hasn’t been addressed since I doubt it but hey, maybe!
As always these recaps are required reading after each episode, hopefully we get a season 4 and the recaps to go with it! Thank you Kayla!
IKR, what’s with the garbage disposal?? I kept saying, Oh DO NOT put that note in the garbage disposal, you freak! And the bitch just straight-up ignored me. 😋
Whew!!
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First off… the fact that they used Kodi’s head for shooting practice sets up a whole element of where they really are. They went from eating all of Jackie in a frenzy and from starvation, respectfully eating Javi and revering his sacrifice to mutilating and murdering coach and putting his head on a platter as a, “we conquered our enemy” to post apocalyptic scene of Kodi’s head with arrows in it that is clearly there as a reminder of what happens to traitors. Then to Shauna full on wearing a part of her number one enemy in strapping Mari’s hair to her cape.
It reminds me of those post apocalyptic movies and shows where someone is entering a space where there are people hanging from walls and heads on stakes to show what the inhabitants are capable of to outsiders but also to remind those inside just as much.
I loved this episode’s reveals because I totally nailed the Callie reveal down to why Lottie had been obsessed with her (wilderness baby parallel). However, I love what you mention that even if you are right about a portion of the plot, the unveiling isn’t spoiled because there are so many layers. I really loved that scene.
I also love how you highlight Lottie’s death montage with younger Lottie. The differences and also whose reality is it? I didn’t really put it together until the recap but it feeds into what Travis said as the hunt was beginning. Something to the effect of, “is this Javi’s reality…. My favorites are Jackie’s memories.” I am curious at the very end of the series if there will be more play with realities.
Misty has long been my favorite character despite how unstable she is. I think whatever trauma she endured not only from being constantly excluded and picked on in high school, but also whatever trauma she endured in her home life as Shauna alluded to, set her up to be able to survive everything she has.
I think we will only get 4 seasons unless this next season is an offshoot in some way to give us more inside detail to each of the characters’ pasts that we haven’t seen both in the teen and adult timelines. Which I would LOVE to see. And with the frog scientist episodes I think they could pull it off.
I’m going to rewatch this episode this next week so will probably have more thoughts but sure love coming to this community every week!
I also can’t shake my affection for Misty! Increasingly, she’s the most grounded, pragmatic one in any given scene. She also — as an adult — seems the least susceptible to group-think.
I ended this season feeling like Misty has emerged as the most sympathetic remaining Yellowjacket in the adult timeline…Shauna is still my favorite, because I have been following her like a duckling since s1, but Misty’s arc this season (especially in the wilderness; I think there’s some daylight between teen Misty helping them get rescued and adult, probable angel-of-death Misty) has shown a lot of unexpected growth.
My other strong feeling this season (besides just thinking it was a wild ride!) is that I wish they hadn’t been forced to write off adult Nat because I can imagine a really interesting arc for her emerging, and it makes me sad she doesn’t get to live it out.
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Really interested in the theme of this season of the adult Yellowjackets reconnecting with their teen selves, for better or worse. Shauna’s past being locked in her closet for the past 20 years and yet being something she doesn’t remember? Brilliant. Fascinated to see if they explore her relationship to her journals next season – did she revisit them? Are they the originals? Are they maybe something she wrote as a way of trying to remember, but also a literal rewriting of her narrative that let her forget who she became? I wonder if the team will have to knock Shauna out to get them rescued, and maybe we’ll find out she has some amnesia, in addition to general trauma.
Finally, been thinking a lot this season about the “return” of the wilderness in the adult timeline. The show starts with a few things instigating the women getting back in touch -Tai running for office, Travis’s death, Jeff blackmailing them. But there were 20 years in there! Why now? I love the ambivalence of the supernatural in this show and I agree I don’t really want an answer to what’s happening out there. BUT I keep thinking, what if the ‘it” of the wilderness becomes dormant when the girls leave because they’re forced to make an even bigger sacrifice somehow. And it’s “reawakened” by Travis’s death/attempted communion with it.
Idk just thinking of Shauna’s first appearance, when she kills the rabbit in her backyard. I kind of love the idea that she hadnt done that in 20 years – Travis died and the hunter in her woke up.
Okay, hear me out. I get twisty sometimes.
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They are playing with reality. Not “duality” but we are seeing a mix of “reality” and “memory.” Memories are never perfect replicas of what happened. They are a mix of the truth and the desire for the situation. I believe that when Nat and Van are the focus characters, we’re seeing reality, not memory, as their adult deaths will eventually confirm that. When anyone else is the focal point, us seeing the scene through their lens, it’s a memory, and it’s how they think it went. Case in point…when the hunt begins, it’s daylight. When they’re dressing Shauna and eating, it’s night…and then it’s day all of a sudden again. Nat is on the mountain, in the day. It’s not them going forward and back in flashes either (this time)…and this isn’t an “oops” by the show-runners. This is an, “are you paying attention,” moment. Shauna remembered the ceremony as a grand thing. It wasn’t.
Her desire then, and now in present day, is that power she thinks came with being the antler queen. When in reality, they knew she was a sociopath and terrified she would snap. It was less power and more fear that gave her the sense of control she thought she had. She had unimaginable things happen out there. Losing Jackie (which was sort of Shauna’s fault), losing her baby, etc. They already played with reality once when she imagined her baby alive. On the flip, the only time wilderness Shauna showed any fear is when she looked in Tai’s eyes and saw she was “the other one.” The only time adult Shauna showed fear, is when her secrets were threatened with exposure. I firmly believe Shauna kills one of the JV members after the wilderness because she can’t keep it a secret anymore—that a hunt didn’t kill Hannah, Shauna did. Shauna straight up murdered her. They all know what Shauna did, and they all covered it up. When she killed Adam, they were more surprised she had an affair. They’ve cleaned up her mess since the wilderness. I’m saying it—Shauna is a serial killer and there are kills only she knows about. She went dormant for a long time, like they tend to do, but the postcard from Jeff in S1, woke “it” up again. Even Lottie alluded that Shuna was a murderer and she saw “it” in Callie too, goading her into reacting like Shauna (and she did). We think of “it” as being some power from the wilderness. What if “it” has always been just Shauna controlling their lives and their situation. There’s been a lot of speculation why they all stayed when Shauna said no to rescue. It’s because Shauna has been unhinged since day 1 and we’re only seeing her memories of how she thinks she was.
Three times in this episode various characters said, in some variation, that they “forgot,” or “couldn’t remember,” or that “none of this is real,” as a way of saying to us, this is a cast of unreliable narrators with many that have mental illness (Lottie is schizophrenic, Tai has multiple personalities, and Shauna is a sociopath, to name a few), but at least one version is true, and it’s up to the audience finding the clues they put in every episode to figure it out. I’ll even go out on a limb and say the “hunts” don’t happen as we see them. That’s Shauna’s memory. The reality could be, you pull the queen card, and Shauna just straight up kills you. This season was brilliant and I have a feeling I know exactly where this is going and yes, they can still make their 5-season arc, if what I’m thinking happens, will happen (if it does, oh baby are we in for a treat! 😁).
A++ Rewatch it all again…seriously S1-S3, and it’ll all make sense.
This is brilliant. Let’s just say that if the story *doesn’t* take us there, it’s going to be a huge disappointment, cuz it needs to be AT LEAST this good!
Question: Didn’t Callie say to her dad, recently, something like What if Mom’s a serial killer?
I think she did make a mention of something to that effect. Now that S3 is over, I’m getting my notebook (I have one for From too—nerd alert-LOL) and I’m jotting down everything I see. 😁
Am I right in remembering that when Mari’s body was being pulled up by a rope that we see a flash of a different version of the scene? In the flash, the person standing by the body (is it Hannah disguised as Nat, I forget) has different clothes on, made completely out of lush furs and pelts, as opposed to the makeshift masks and clothes the team has crafted.
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If that’s the case, this plays well into the theory about reality vs. memory. Because I also noticed the discrepancies between daylight and nighttime (but assumed maybe Nat had just been trekking all night), but maybe it has more to do with unreliable narration and varying points of view. I’m really hoping that they get to film the last two seasons, as originally planned. I still have way too many questions. For instance:
-Did Nat tell everyone about Misty and the transponder? Because I feel like there’s no way the team would have let her live after that…is Nat keeping that secret the reason why Misty thinks they’re BFFs?
-Why is Walter still here? I don’t actually care as much as I want him to go away.
-A big one, I know, but, is there something supernatural going on? I feel like I could argue it either way…But the intersections of mental illness, trauma, distortion, imagination, and the supernatural are fascinating. Especially keeping in mind that these people were *young* when this happened and their brains were still developing.
-Tai said a few episodes ago that it wasn’t time to leave YET. When is “yet” and why does it mean it’s time to leave? What needs to happen? And is that now sped up by Nat’s success with the radio?
-Are any of them going to survive at the end? Are they even meant to? Lottie said the It didn’t want them to leave. Maybe that leaves only Callie at the end?
These recaps are essential to my YJ experience, so thank you, Kayla! It’s obvious how much time and thought goes into them!
Also wondering about the ongoing presence of Walter… I do enjoy Elijah Wood’s performance, but why’s he still around?!
And more specifically from this episode, what was with Walter spying on Misty and Tai in the diner while blasting Slayer? He must have some purpose to this plot, beyond on-off romantic interest for Misty.
He’s definitely involved in the teen storyline somehow…I’m cooking a few theories on him. Lol. He really wants Misty away from them, especially Shauna. His grievance is with her, first and foremost. One theory I have is, I think he was someone’s relative from the teen timeline, and he successfully got Lottie’s father (and the airline used for the private flight) to pay him hush money, or he would tell the world what happened in the wilderness. The season finale actually opened up the show to both the wildest possible theories or the most mundane, like blackmail.
I replied to a crap poster on Reddit that kept yammering on about how “40-something’s wouldn’t act like that.” Uh, yeah they would, IF they survived a plane crash, lived in an isolated location, and learned how to survive. Oh, and they occasional murder people, and eat them. The adult Yellowjackets have stunted emotional and psychological growth. They are 40+-year-old women with 16/17/18-year-old cognition. Mentally, they never left that place because the real world was/is too hard, and too complicated. The life and light in their eyes when they talk about “it,” in the adult timeline, illustrates that point. The wilderness made them feel alive. It’s in them. Who they were out there is who they are inside. That was when they were themselves the most. I love this show. It’s so much more, and quite complex with interpersonal relationships, and psychology than it appears on the surface.
I can’t believe this season is over! I’m going to miss it and your recaps, Kayla. Loved this episode. I have a few questions:
– Nat knows that Misty hid the black box but does she know she destroyed it? Hiding it would have also been a reason to be furious, especially if it’s fixable, but Misty would have had to tell her that she destroyed it.
– Why tf did Melissa kill Van? Understandable and a good direction for Tai to turn on Shauna but I was hoping she would first hunt down Melissa.
– Hard to believe Akilah would poison her animals. Was a hunt/ one of them dying and getting eaten really the only way to create a distraction for Natalie to run off? Maybe since not many of them were actually participating in the hunt.
– Seems like obvious foreshadowing now that Mari had already spent some time in that pit.
That scene with Natalie on the mountaintop was incredible.
Thank you!
I do think it is probably part of Tai’s plan to hunt down Melissa, too. I think both Melissa and Shauna will be on the run from Tai/Misty, and I feel like that’s going to be SUCH an interesting dynamic and place for the show to go.
Also, Tai at the diner! With only her in frame, using two different tones. Like the two Tais were finally sharing consciousness. She’d integrated them now so no more forgetting. I almost thought she was alone til they panned to Misty!
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There’s a typo in the article. It says that van went to check on the satellite phone during the hunt but I believe it was Natalie that did so.
I’m very excited that they are finally getting rescued. And personally I’m on team kill Shauna